


All of Your Wasted Honor

by redhearted



Category: Football RPF, Spanish nt - Fandom
Genre: Angst, M/M, Nandovilla, Torrilla
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 11:16:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2730392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redhearted/pseuds/redhearted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Who had started it? His watery memories insist it was David. Rationally, he knew it had taken both of them.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>AU. Fernando has always played at Atleti. One summer, they sign David Villa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All of Your Wasted Honor

**Author's Note:**

> An exploration of the pain wrought by infidelity on each party involved. 
> 
> Disclaimer: The characters and events are purely fictitious.

She had forgiven.

She’d fought with herself not to. What did it make her, to forgive? A long-suffering woman, who let her man do as he pleased, and was always there to take him back in the end?

No - none of that. It had taken far more pain and stomach and sight to forgive.

She doesn’t think there is anyone else in the world she could have forgiven.

 

* * *

 

_Fernando_

 

One day, David invites him over to dinner. “We’ll make you all our favorites,” the striker tells him. “Patricia’s an amazing cook, you’ll see. I'm not so bad either.”

At the mention of Patricia, Fernando feels a strange lump of guilt form in his throat. But he shouldn’t be guilty for the thoughts in the privacy of his own mind. He forces a smile through  layers of insecurity, and nods. “That would be great,” he says. “Thank you.”

Back at home, cooking for himself, he considers what may have prompted David’s invitation. The kindness of his heart was the most likely answer. The Asturian was a warm man, clearly a loving husband. No doubt David had noticed his, Fernando’s, almost canine adulation, and had taken pity on him.

His hand slips and the knife draws a jagged line through the tomato he’s cutting, and he yanks his injured hand away instinctively. Grimaces, checks the skin.

It looks okay, as if he’s escaped unscathed. But seconds later he notices the smudges of faded red and the faint tang of iron in the air.

He _is_ bleeding, after all.

 

A week later, he’s sitting on David’s couch in David’s spacious living room, holding one of David’s beers and taking a gulp. David is apologizing for Patricia’s absence.

“She’ll be back soon,” he says. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you fed.”

Fernando smiles. “Oh, no, I – I wasn’t worrying.”

David grins, goes back to his preparations. “So – well – how is life? How’s the single life in Madrid? I can’t remember being your age, I swear.”

“It’s not like you’re middle-aged, even,” Fernando snorts. “Even though you sometimes fucking act like it.”

“Only sometimes?”

Fernando grins, matching David’s. “Most of the time you act younger than the kids in the youth team.” He laughs when David puts on an affronted expression. “But, well, the single life. It’s hard.”

“I’ll bet.” David shakes his head. “I can’t imagine _that_ anymore, either.”

“You got married when you were, what, ten?”

Fernando takes in David’s smile, the shadow of stubble on his jaw and the rest of a familiar, idolized face. _I love this man_ , he thinks to himself. Regardless of how long he’s actually known him, he does. The feeling swoops in his stomach, causes him to feel unbalanced inside even as he’s sitting on the couch.

“So what’s hard, eh? You can sleep whenever you want, go wherever…lucky bastard.”

“It’s hard sometimes to meet people,” Fernando shrugs. “Sometimes people know me.”

David nods. “Oh, that. I miss that. The unplanned conversations with strangers, you know? On the street, in shops, on holiday, whatever. Just as two strangers getting to know each other a little better.”

“Yeah, not just know you as ‘David Villa’,” Fernando agrees. “Maybe you should go somewhere really fucking remote, where people hardly watch football.”

At that, David laughs. “I _could_ , you know. I guess very few things are truly impossible if you try.”

David lines up the last tomato under his knife, slices into it. Fernando remembers the cut on his finger and runs his thumb over the bandaid that covers it.

After David has set the pot of soup bubbling on the stove, he grabs another beer from the fridge and sinks into the couch, beside Fernando, with a satisfied sigh. They sit like that, companionably, side by side, waiting for David’s wife to come home.

 

Two weeks after the dinner, he reciprocates. Asks David if he wants to go out. His treat. Please invite Patricia.

“You know, she’s not actually here this week,” David says. “She’s on one of her trips up north.”

“So just you?”

“Unfortunately.”

 

Fernando tries not to treat it as a date. It sort of is, but an unromantic one, he tells himself. Like a dinner date between friends.

Except David is older, and taken, and Fernando wants his body.

He’s not sure whether he actually wants David himself. He just knows that for whatever reason, his brain is triggering his body to mate whenever he is within spitting distance of David and they’re alone. Just one of the illogical things in life, probably. Bodily chemistry and all that.

David shows up at his flat in a hilariously awful designer shirt, over hilariously awful ripped jeans. His shoes match the color of his top. Fernando can’t help beaming broadly at the sight of him.

“So? What are we having?”

“Alcohol,” Fernando grins. Neither of them know it then, but a ritual is born.

 

David is a family man and always has dinner with his wife when they are together. So the talking and alcohol, he and Fernando do it when they are away in other cities, sometimes with other teammates and sometimes without. They do it, too, when Patricia goes home to her parents’. David is a pleasing drunk, neither sad nor mad, only growing funnier (though his jokes grow lamer) and even more affectionate than usual. Not that he’s ever really _drunk_ ; he’s always in control of himself.

So is Fernando, with David, but that’s because he doesn’t trust himself. Wasn’t alcohol the great unofficial truth serum? He preferred not to find out. The truths that echoed in his head were not for anybody else’s ears.

 

* * *

 

_David_

 

Patricia is sitting up in bed, propped on the luxurious new pillows they’d bought, reading another book off the bestseller list. David stays in the doorway of the bathroom, just smiling at her. 

“Hey, beautiful,” he says. She glances up at him and her lips twitch.

“What’s up, you big romancer?”

“Is that sarcasm?” David raises an eyebrow as he walks toward the bed. He slides into his side, pulling Patricia close and pressing a kiss to her temple. She turns her head and kisses him on the mouth, book temporarily forgotten. They kiss for far longer than either of them had planned or expected, until David feels her hand slipping down from under his shirt, lower, lower.

“Do you think we have this much sex because I’m away every other week?” he mumbles, letting her have her way. He feels her smile against his lips.

“Do you really want to question it?”

“No, no, no,” he says. She laughs at his urgency. Her hand finds him and he sighs, satisfied, tracing his palm over the smoothness of her skin.

She muses, “How do you manage without me?”

Strangely, unbidden, Fernando comes to his mind. David blinks, looks at his wife. He remembers her question and laughs, but it’s mostly just for a response. He puts the thought from his mind.

“I have ways,” he tells her. “I’m a big boy now.”

She squeezes and he melts at her touch like he has always done.

 

Being with Fernando makes him happy. They have a nice rapport for two guys with an age difference. Fernando is no replacement for the others, of course. Neither funny enough to replace Pepe (who could be?), nor tender enough to substitute for Iker, nor sardonic or clueless enough for Xavi or Cesc. And so on. Fernando is all his own, which is no bad thing at all.

One or two times he’s caught Fernando looking at him. Probably some dilemma reconciling this David with the persona Villa. It’s understandable. He recalls the idolatry of his own youth, the poster of Pep he’d tacked up in his locker, his own schoolboy blushing when they actually met. It would pass, whatever Fernando is thinking. He’d find out David was nothing special off the field, and hopefully that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

They’ve grown closer. Pepe sniffs about it (amongst other things) in their weekly cross-ocean talks. Xavi spends part of one phone call actually sounding a little jealous. Iker persistently tries to pry him away on weekends, encouraging him to 'fraternize with the enemy’.

“You weren’t my enemy last season, and you certainly aren’t now,” David laughs.

“Don’t ever let the fans know that.” Iker smacks him on the back. David retaliates.

 

It happens as these things tend to happen, not so much out of the blue as with the ambiguous certainty that accompanies lost things being eventually found.

It isn’t a kiss, or handholding, or even a brush, a fleeting touch. It’s nothing but Fernando looking at him in the wrong way, for a wrong amount of time. Something passes in that strange heart-edge glance.

David stands abruptly and puts his beer down and Fernando flinches.

“So, well, I’ll be heading back now,” David says. Somehow he can’t keep the strangeness at bay and it seeps into his voice. It shows.

“Right,” Fernando says; he sounds defeated. He can’t quite meet David’s eyes. He forces out an obligatory, “So soon?”

“I have some—I was going to call my parents tonight,” David shrugs. His heart is hammering with some strange mix of feelings: self-righteous indignation, anger, hope, and shame.

Self-righteous indignation: _I have a wife and I love her._

Anger: _How dare you think I would do that with you?_

Hope: _I am overjoyed that you want me._

 

And shame: _I want you._

 

* * *

 

 

_Fernando_

 

The air between them is stained with a discernible tension. The other guys aren’t sure what has happened. “Just have a talk,” Diego says one afternoon, looking at him with mild confusion and sympathy. Disputes usually blew over within a week; the temporary rivals would trade backslaps and rude words and then go home laughing. Whatever it was between David and Fernando, it was not blowing over.

David is still perfectly nice on the surface. But that’s just it; he’s nothing now but surface. Surface hellos and goodbyes, a surface smile if they happen to meet on the pitch or in the training rooms. 

One day he makes up his mind to do as Diego said. He waits for David’s car to pull into the parking lot and looks around to make sure they’re alone before accosting him.

“Hey.” David has that infuriating reserved smile on his face as he gets out.

“Hey. We need to have a fucking talk.” The words come out too forcefully; Fernando blinks but doesn’t regret it.

David stares at Fernando, doesn't move. "Jesus Christ, you're a baby," he says. But he doesn't look away.

“No I’m not.” It’s positively infantile and Fernando flushes. “Listen, I’m _not_. And I’m fucking sick of you treating me like one, okay, _cabrón_?”

The older man looks at him. Fernando thinks to himself it’s the first time he’s looked into David’s eyes like this, at such a close distance for so long. The softness of his soul is clear from here.

“What do you want?” David asks, finally.

They stand there, eyes locked, until the sound of a teammate’s car pulls them away from each other.

 

* * *

 

 

_David_

 

The incident in the parking lot drives Fernando a little deeper into his subconscious and anchors him there.

He catches his mind shuffling through the usual images and memories one afternoon in the shower, and this time among them is Fernando. In fact, it’s the image that stays and that his mind chooses to fixate on even as his consciousness tries to bat it away.

One afternoon, he gives in, and slumps afterward, guilty from the mental betrayal.

 

He thinks of all the women and some men who have offered themselves to him, remembers the ease with which he had rebuffed them. _I am married to a wonderful human being and it is such an honor to be loyal to her._

Why wasn’t it so easy this time around?

 

* * *

 

 

_Fernando_

 

“Just because the boss is fucking his secretary doesn’t mean he loves her.”

Fernando lifts his head from juggling the ball and stares at Diego. “What?”

“You know that, right? It’s kind of obvious.”

“Yeah…” Fernando says, slowly. “Why are you talking about this?”

Diego shrugs. “Was thinking about bosses fucking secretaries.”

Fernando puts his head down again and decides to ignore his friend. Diego does a few kicks with his football as well, so they are in silence for a while. The sky is Spanish blue and the birds are singing in the trees just behind the dark green fences.

“It’s not worth it. Affairs hurt everyone involved. The wife – of course, eh? The secretary – she isn’t getting what she wants. And the boss! – well, he’s just a fucking bastard.”

The outburst stuns Fernando and seems to have stunned Diego himself, too, because he doesn’t say anything more.

“ _Hombre_ , what the fuck are you talking about?”

Diego groans and shoves a hand through his hair and finally gets out, “You and Villa, man! You have to stop that shit.” He explains, before Fernando can ask, “I saw you two in the parking lot the other day, I figured it out.”

Fernando forces a laugh. Then another. “You are fucked up, _tío_ , what the fuck are you on about? I’m not being the secretary to anybody’s fucking boss, okay?” It feels good to be able to say that and have it be the truth. But it hurts that if he could get what he wanted, then it would be the truth.

Diego is flattening his hair now, looking uncomfortable and doubtful and suspicious all at once.

“Well,” he says. “Whatever the problem is, solve it. You guys are fucking the team up.”

 

He sees David in the shower, and as usual, his mind and body never fail to respond. His imagination leaps into activity. He turns his body to the wall and his back to David.

Because the rest of the shower is empty and the rest of the guys are drying off by now, he makes himself call out:

“Do you want to come over for drinks tonight?”

There’s nothing but the sound of their showers for what feels like a full minute.

“Sure,” David agrees.

 

* * *

 

 

_David_

 

In the past week he had found a song that now haunted him, the lines from it insisting themselves upon him.

_Take all of your wasted honor_

_Say what you need to say._

_Have no fear for giving in_

(This was his biggest fear.)

 

He gives in.

 

* * *

 

 

_Fernando_

 

The night is a slow slide down a slippery slope. The ironic thing is, he had started the night with the best of intentions. As in: 1. Invite David over. 2. Have friendly drinks and shoot the shit. 3. Have everything be back to normal.

Ha fucking _ha_.

Who had started it? His watery memories insist it was David. Rationally, he knew it had taken both of them.

David’s hand on his knee, then making its way too far up. It was still just bordering on acceptable. It probably would have remained so, had he not reacted to the mere proximity of David and the warm weight of his touch. He just wanted it so much. They were _so_ close. So fucking close.

Then it was over and the distance was gone.

 

* * *

 

 

_David_

 

It’s strange, playing the part of the unfaithful husband. And that is what it feels like: playing a part. Lying to Patricia about where he was going, or what he did, when he spent time with Fernando. Lying to teammates.

He derives a black excitement from taking the boy, taking him apart in his hands. The power of it all feeds his ego though the whole time his conscience is screaming that it cannot recognize himself at all.

It grows comfortable. He feels secure; no one would find out, and he could stop whenever he wanted. He is careful, using condoms, always cleaning up, careful to avoid any marks on his body.

He leaves marks on Fernando, though, because he can: little things at first, the mark of his hand where hip joined thigh. Then more, biting down on the vulnerability of his neck at the height of their passions. They had long since progressed to the full extent in their affair, David deep inside him, both of them reaping the dark gratification of this illicit beauty.

 

Shame and guilt and excuses: _we weren’t made to be monogamous._

Crippling shame. He can’t bring himself to meet her eyes.

She starts suspecting something is wrong; how could she not?

She asks him whether she has done something, or said something, and it breaks his heart.

 

* * *

 

_Fernando_

 

“Fernando – I – I can’t – we have to – I never should have.”

David has had the grace to say it face to face. He keeps swallowing and he looks so stricken that Fernando feels an inexplicable fury building alongside his understanding.

And he feels a reckless and vicious pleasure when the power of his position now dawns upon him.

He fights that side of him.

“What do you want me to do?” he asks, instead.

“Nothing,” David says.

It feels to Fernando as though he had asked, “What am I to you?”

But he fights the dark threats in his mind and he asks, “Will you tell her?”

David’s eyes are wide. Somehow, amidst the disorder of their wrongdoing, Fernando sees through to the wide-open rawness of David, the core of truth and plain, shadowless light.

He tells him to tell her.

 

* * *

 

 

She doesn’t think there is anyone else in the world she could have forgiven.


End file.
